Ross Poldark (3 page)

“Wait on yourself,” said Jud.

Joshua slept.

I
T WAS WINDY. THE PALE AFTERNOON SKY WAS SHREDDED WITH CLOUDS, THE road, grown dustier and more uneven in the last hour, was scattered with blown and rustling leaves.

There were five people in the coach; a thin clerkly man with a pinched face and a shiny suit, and his wife, fat as her husband was thin, and holding to her breast a con fused bundle of pink and white draperies from one end of which pouted the creased and overheated features of a young baby. The other travellers were men, both young, one a clergyman of about thirty-five, the other some years his junior.

Almost since the coach left St. Austell there had been silence inside it. The child slept soundly despite the jolting of the vehicle and the rattle of the windows and the clank of the swingle bars; nor had the stops wakened it. From time to time the elderly couple exchanged remarks in undertones, but the thin husband was unwilling to talk, a little overawed by the superior class in which he found himself. The younger of the two men had been reading a book throughout the journey, the elder had watched the passing countryside, one hand holding back the faded dusty brown velvet curtain.

This was a small spare man, severe in clerical black, wearing his own hair scraped back and curled above and behind the ears. The cloth he wore was of fine quality and his stockings were of silk. His was a long, keen, humourless, thin-lipped face, vital and hard. The little clerk knew the face but could not name it.

The clergyman was in much the same position over the other occupant of the coach. A half-dozen times his glance had rested on the thick unpowdered hair opposite, and on the face of his fellow traveller.

When they were not more than fifteen minutes out of Truro and the horses had slowed to a walking pace up the stiff hill, the other man looked up from his book and their eyes met.

“You’ll pardon me, sir,” said the clergyman in a sharp, vigorous voice. “Your features are familiar, but I find it hard to recall where we have met. Was it in Oxford?”

The young man was tall and thin and big-boned, with a scar on his cheek. He wore a double-breasted riding coat cut away short in front to show the waistcoat and the stout breeches, both of a lighter brown. His hair, which had a hint of copper in its darkness, was brushed back and tied at the back with brown ribbon.

“You’re the Revd. Dr. Halse, aren’t you?” he said.

The little clerk, who had been following this exchange, made an expressive face at his wife. Rector of Towerdreth, Curate of St. Erme, Headmaster of Truro Grammar School, high burgess of the town and late mayor, Dr. Halse was a personage. It explained his bearing.

“You know me, then,” said Dr. Halse with a gracious air. “I usually have a memory for faces.”

“You have had many pupils.”

“Ah, that explains it. Maturity changes a face. And—hm. Let me see… is it Hawkey?”

“Poldark.”

The clergyman's eyes narrowed in an effort of remembrance. “Francis, is it? I thought—”

“Ross. You will remember my cousin more clearly. He stayed on. I felt, quite wrongly, that at thirteen my education had gone far enough.”

Recognition came. “Ross Poldark. Well, well. You’ve changed. I remember now,” said Dr. Halse with a glint of cold humour. “You were insubordinate. I had to thrash you at frequent intervals, and then you ran way.”

“Yes.” Poldark turned the page of his book. “A bad business. And your ankles as sore as my buttocks.”

Two small pink spots came to the clergyman's cheeks. He stared a moment at Ross and then turned to look out of the window.

The little clerk had heard of the Poldarks, had heard of Joshua, from whom, they said, in the fifties and sixties no pretty woman married or unmarried was safe. This must be his son. An unusual face with its strongly set cheekbones, wide mouth, and large, strong white teeth. The eyes were a very clear blue-grey
under the heavy lids which gave a number of the Poldarks that deceptively sleepy look.

Dr. Halse was returning to the attack.

“Francis, I suppose, is well? Is he married?”

“Not when I last heard, sir. I’ve been in America some time.”

“Dear me. A deplorable mistake, the fighting. I was against it throughout. Did you see much of the war?”

“I was in it.”

They had reached the top of the hill at last and the driver was slackening his bearing reins at the descent before him.

Dr. Halse wrinkled his sharp nose. “You are a Tory?”

“A soldier.”

“Well, it was not the fault of the soldiers that we lost. England's heart was not in it. We have a derelict old man on the throne. He’ll not last much longer. The Prince has different views.”

The road in the steepest part of the hill was deeply rutted, and the coach jolted and swayed dangerously. The baby began to cry. They reached the bottom and the man beside the driver blew a blast on his horn. They turned into St. Austell Street. It was a Tuesday afternoon and there were few people about the shops. Two half-naked urchins ran the length of the street begging for a copper, but gave up the chase as the coach swayed into the mud of St. Clement's Street. With much creaking and shouting they rounded the sharp corner, crossed the river by the narrow bridge, jolted over granite cobbles, turned and twisted again, and at last drew up before the Red Lion Inn.

In the bustle that followed, the Revd. Dr. Halse got out first with a stiff word of farewell and was gone, stepping briskly between the puddles of rainwater and horse urine to the other side of the narrow street. Poldark rose to follow, and the clerk saw for the first time that he was lame.

“Can I help you, sir?” he offered, putting down his belongings.

The young man refused with thanks and, handed out from the outside by a postboy, climbed down.

When Ross left the coach rain was beginning to fall, a thin fine rain blowing before the wind, which was gusty and uncertain here in the hollow of the hills.

He gazed about him and sniffed. All this was so familiar, quite as truly a coming home as when he would reach his own house. This narrow cobbled street with the streamlet of water bubbling down it, the close-built squat houses with their bow windows and lace curtains, many of them partly screening faces which were watching the arrival of the coach, even the cries of the postboys seemed to have taken on a different and more familiar note.

Truro in the old days had been the centre of “life” for him and his family. A port and a coinage town,
the
shopping centre and a meeting place of fashion, the town had grown rapidly in the last few years, new and stately houses having sprung up among the disorderly huddle of old ones to mark its adoption as a winter and town residency by some of the oldest and most powerful families in Cornwall. The new aristocracy too were leaving their mark: the Lemons, the Treworthys, the Warleggans, families which had pushed their way up from humble beginnings on the crest of the new industries.

A strange town. He felt it more on his return. A secretive, important little town, clustering in the fold of the hills astride and about its many streams, almost sur rounded by running water and linked to the rest of the world by fords, by bridges, and by stepping-stones. Miasma and the other fevers were always rife.

…There was no sign of Jud.

He limped into the inn.

“My man was to meet me,” he said. “Paynter is his name. Jud Paynter of Nampara.”

The landlord peered at him shortsightedly. “Oh, Jud Paynter. Yes, we know him well, sir. But we have not seen him today. You say he was to meet you here? Boy, go and ascertain if Paynter—you know him?—if Paynter is in the stables or has been here today.”

Ross ordered a glass of brandy and by the time it came the boy was back to say that Mr. Paynter had not been seen that day.

“The arrangement was quite definite. It doesn’t matter. You have a saddle horse I can hire?”

The landlord rubbed the end of his long nose. “Well, we have a mare that was left here three days gone. In fact, we held it in lieu of a debt. I don’t think there could be any objection to loaning her if you could give me some reference.”

“My name is Poldark. I am a nephew to Mr. Charles Poldark of Trenwith.”

“Dear, dear, yes; I should have recognized you, Mr. Poldark. I’ll have the mare saddled for you at once.”

“No, wait. There's some daylight yet. Have her ready in an hour.”

Out in the street again, Ross turned down the narrow slit of Church Lane. At the end he bore right and, after passing the school where his education had come to an ungracious end, he stopped before a door on which was printed: “Nat. G. Pearce. Notary and Commissioner of Oaths.” He pulled at the bell for some time before a pimply woman admitted him.

“Mr. Pearce bean’t well today,” she said. “I’ll see if he’ll see you.”

She climbed the wooden stairs, and after an interval called down an invitation over the worm-eaten banisters. He groped a way up and was shown into a parlour.

Mr. Nathanial Pearce was sitting in an easy chair in front of a large fire with one leg tied in bandages propped upon another chair. He was a big man with a big face, coloured a light plum purple from overeating.

“Oh, now this is a surprise, I do exclaim, Mr. Poldark. How pleasant. You’ll forgive me if I don’t rise; the old trouble; each attack seems worse than the last. Take a seat.”

Ross grasped a moist hand and chose a chair as far from the fire as was polite. Insufferably hot in here and the air was old and stale.

“You’ll remember,” he said, “I wrote you I was returning this week.”

“Oh yes, Mr.—er—Captain Poldark; it had slipped my memory for the moment; how nice to call in on your way home.” Mr. Pearce adjusted his bob-wig which, in the way of his profession, had a high frontlet and a long bag at the back tied in the middle. “I am desolate here, Captain Poldark; my daughter offers me no company; she has become converted to some Methodist way of belief, and is out almost every night at a prayer meeting. She talks so much of God that it quite embarrasses me. You must have a glass of canary.”

“My stay is to be short,” said Ross. It certainly must, he thought, or I shall sweal away. “I am anxious to be home again but thought I’d see you on my way. Your letter did not reach me until a fortnight before we sailed from New York.”

“Dear, dear, such a delay; what a blow it would be; and you have been wounded; is it severe?”

Ross eased his leg. “I see from your letter that my father died in March. Who has administered the estate since then, my uncle or you?”

Mr. Pearce absently scratched the ruffles on his chest. “I know you would wish me to be frank with you.”

“Of course.”

“Well, when we came to go into his affairs, Mr.—er—Captain Poldark, it did not seem that he had left much for either of us to administer.”

A slow smile crept over Ross's mouth; it made him look younger, less intractable.

“Everything was naturally left to you. I’ll give you a copy of the will before you go; should you predecease him, then to his niece Verity. Aside from the actual property there is little to come in for. Ouch, this thing is twinging most damnably!”

“I have never looked on my father as a wealthy man. I asked, though, and was anxious to know, for a special reason. He was buried at Sawle?”

The lawyer stopped scratching and eyed the other man shrewdly. “You’re thinking of settling at Nampara now, Captain Poldark?”

“I am.”

“Any time I can do any business for you, only too pleased. I should say,” Mr. Pearce hastened on as the young man rose. “I should say that you may find your property a little neglected.”

Ross turned.

“I have not ridden over myself,” said Mr. Pearce; “this leg, you know; most distressing, and me not yet two and fifty; but my clerk has been out. Your father was in failing health for some time and things are not kept just so neat and tidy as you’d like when the master's not about, are they? Nor's your uncle so young as he used to be. Is Paynter meeting you with a horse?”

“He was to have done so but has not turned up.”